


the soul of a stranger

by aesphantasmal



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, I started writing this at the start of s3, M/M, Mind Control, Other, Violence, juno and nureyev in my fic what bones will they break, so it's probably technically canon divergent by now, tw brief panic attack, very loosely implied past child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23504077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesphantasmal/pseuds/aesphantasmal
Summary: Juno Steel wakes up in a room he doesn't recognise in a city he doesn't recognise with large gaps in his memory.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 28
Kudos: 132





	the soul of a stranger

**Author's Note:**

> Ok! So! This took so fucking long!  
> thank u to captain-aurinko and lesbiandemon for beta reading this sorry I kept asking you to do it over and over  
> also, because I had the idea so early into s3 — like, man in glass had just come out — any resemblance to later s3 episodes is purely coincidental

I woke up in a large, clean room. I didn't remember how I got here. I didn't know where I was, or  _ when _ now was — the last few days, weeks — months?  _ years? _ were a blur. 

I could feel a burning in my chest and an aching in my head.

Slowly, I got out of bed. I stared around the room, collecting my thoughts. Stating the only facts I could grab onto in my mind.

_ My name is Juno Steel. _

_ This is not my apartment. _

_ I come from Hyperion City. _

I look out the large window.

_ This is not Hyperion City. _

Do I still live in Hyperion? I don't remember. There's a gnawing feeling in my chest that this is wrong, somehow, however I got here and wherever the hell "here" is, I'm not supposed to be here.

There are clothes folded on a chair by the door. Don't know if they're mine. I check the coat pocket. There's something in there. I pull it out slowly.

It's a comms unit. Shiny, no cracks or dents or scratches, not even a fingerprint. I turn it on. The factory default screen stares back at me. I open the contacts list, hoping for some way to talk to someone. It's empty.

Who was I expecting to be in the contact list? Names bubble to the surface of my brain, names from different places and times. I focus on the few I can place and sort.

_ Benzaiten is — was — my brother. _

_ Diamond is gone who knows where. _

Rita is the first person I think of that I have the gut feeling I should be able to contact. Why? Who is Rita to me? My first thought was  _ secretary,  _ but that felt wrong, out of date.  _ Friend _ , I settled on after a bit of thinking. Not that I had any way to contact her.

_ Jet Siquiliak. Buddy Aurinko. Vespa Ilkay.  _ The names came to me all together before I could even remember how they linked to one another. The faces my memories attached to the names were, blurry, indistinct. I opened every app on the comms, trying to piece together  _ anything  _ about my current situation. But all I could tell was that whoever owned the place was rich and didn't have much of a taste for colour. The walls were white, the bed was white, the carpet was white, the desk was white. The only splash of colour were the clothes.

As I picked them up and looked at them, I decided they had to be mine. They felt too worn and familiar to be new, and they were just a bit too shabby to fit with this show home of a room. I got dressed, patting down the rest of my clothes. The pockets of everything else seemed to be empty. I could feel a few cut threads in the sleeve of my coat, and I knew there must be some reason for that but I couldn't remember for the life of me what it  _ was _ , beyond the same gut feeling that something was wrong. And, while the outfit had a coat, it didn't have any shoes.

The rest of the room was pretty empty. Just the bed, desk, and chair. No closet, no drawers in the desk. The light was a single bulb embedded into the ceiling. I couldn't see a light switch. I was about to try the door when I noticed it. A small camera, watching me from up in the corner of the room. I walk up towards the bed, keeping my eyes on it. It follows me, and it continues to follow me as I walk back. Ugh, unless I get out of whatever this place is quick, I'm taking that thing out for my own sanity.

I push the desk chair over to just underneath the camera and stand on it to get a closer look. The camera itself looks pretty solid, and it's connected to the wall by a fairly thick metal bar with wires running along it. I don't know enough about cameras to tell if just cutting the wires will be enough, and it keeps turning to face me, so I can't get a good look at the back.

... Actually, I might be able to use that. It's changing position pretty quickly, and it's not huge. So, if I was going to take a guess, the turning mechanism might give me a place to snap it off if I can get something more than my hands to do it with. Which means I have to leave the room to find something.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't want to stay in this weird room being watched by  _ someone  _ forever. But I also don't want to walk straight into whatever I'm going to find outside without knowing a little more than I know. I'd at least like to have some idea what I'm walking into before I do, but all I can tell is that it's fairly light and quiet outside the room I woke up in. But still, my gut's telling me something is wrong, and I'm not exactly inclined to disagree given I woke up in a place I didn't recognise with so many holes in my memory you'd think the police academy were using it for target practice. But if gut instincts counted for actual evidence, my job would have been a hell of a lot easier.

I hesitate when I feel the door move more than I'd expected it to as I push the handle down. I realised I'd expected it to be locked, but even without opening it fully, I could tell it wasn't. What was outside of this room? I could see light coming in from under the door, and as I strained to listen I could hear the noise of something — maybe something being put down on some kind of surface? Something like that. I considered just staying put. But hell, it wasn't like knowing that finding answers might be dangerous and that I might not like what I found out had ever stopped me looking, at least as far as I remembered. So I opened the door. Then I stood there blinking for a few seconds because of how bright the lights were. Once I could see properly again, I saw I was in a small corridor. There was a window at one end, with a plant with large, green leaves in a large pot in the corner. I probably wouldn't have noticed the camera hidden at the base of the plant if I hadn't been looking for it.

There were two other doors, then the corridor opened up to another room I couldn't see clearly at the other end. Everything I could see looked like it could have been put in yesterday. There wasn't a single mark on the pristine off-white walls, no scuff marks on the floor, the door handle was even slightly stiff like the door had barely been opened before. 

One of the other doors was slightly ajar, and I could see it was a bathroom, every tile and chrome tap so polished you could do your makeup in any surface flat enough for it. Looking inside the bathroom, I saw some water droplets on the glass wall of the shower, and an open bag of toiletries next to the sink. There's also a small bag with some basic toiletries on the other side of the sink that looks like some kind of generic package they might sell at a spaceport so you had to pay ten times as many creds as you needed because you really only wanted a goddamn toothbrush but they're going to make you buy the whole thing and you're in too much of a hurry to go somewhere else. On the package was written  _ Juno Steel _ in a featureless print. I looked through it for a few minutes, trying to see if I can find some clue on the generic deodorant and the subpar shower gel about what the hell is happening. I'm somewhere in the Outer Rim, I think — the actual writing on the bottles is in a language I don't understand, with labels in Solar stuck onto them. The other bag has the same bottles in it, but partly empty, and the stuck-on labels seem to be in a different Outer Rim language. How'd I get to the Outer Rim? When? How long have I been here? 

Suddenly, I feel a swell of anger. Someone's messing with me, I know it, and I don't like it. They've given me so little information that I can't use any one piece to back up another, and I don't know if I can trust what I do know. It's like trying to do a jigsaw with a tenth of the pieces and the lingering feeling that whoever has the other 90% of them is laughing at you struggling. So, I have to go searching for the other pieces, and they're sure not in this bathroom.

I check the other door on the corridor. It's locked, but the handle is less stiff than the other door. Probably another bedroom, based on its placement opposite my room. No reason to go in yet, as far as I could tell. No noise beyond the door. So I head for the room down the corridor.

I went in slowly. The first thing I saw was a table, one of the chairs moved like someone had sat in it and not tucked it back on under the table. From this angle, I couldn't see behind the kitchen counters I could see on my side of the room. But I could see plates and mugs on them. I walked forwards carefully. I wasn't sure who I expected or wanted to be or who I was scared was there, but I've earned a bit of caution here and there, I think. So, I walked further into the room to get a good look at my housemate.

As soon as I saw him, several names came to the surface of my mind at once. I wanted to call him a lot of things. The names _Rex Glass, Duke Rose, Peter Nureyev, Monsieur Dauphin,_ _Peter Ransom_ all forced their way to the surface of my groggy brain. "Good morning, Juno," he said.

I stared at him for a second, trying to put his memories into something coherent, even if it was just a name. Eventually, I decided to just go for the obvious and use the only name I remembered twice.

"Hey, Peter." I walked in and sat down at the table, examining the room. There's a camera in here too. Weirdly, it still seems to be following me and only me, even though Peter's in here too.

"How did you sleep?" He's putting the plates and mugs away. The cupboards for the dishes seem fairly full.

"Fine, I think. I, uh, don't really remember what happened. Where are we? How did we end up here?"

"We're on Hathor. We landed here a few days ago. You were injured, and when you woke up, you barely seemed to remember who any of us were. So you're being kept here for now. Water?"

"Uh, sure." Peter comes and sits down at the table with two plastic cups full of water, placing one down in front of me. I take it, and go and investigate the kitchen cupboards. The fridge is full, mostly of pretty healthy food — I see a lot of fruit and veg and not a lot I could rustle up into a good old depression meal. The drawer with the plates and mugs is pretty full too, though all the cups seem to be plastic. The cutlery drawer is a different matter entirely. There's a fair number of flimsy-looking plastic forks and spoons and chopsticks, but no knives, let alone any sharp enough to do any cooking with. By the way the drawer was designed, I'd say there were never supposed to be any in there. The drawer was pretty small and each type of cutlery had its own segment. I searched the rest of the drawers, and didn't find anything.

"Peter?"

"Hmm?"

"Do we have any knives?"

"You're in recovery, Juno. It wouldn't be safe. They gave us a machine that can cut up anything you need."

I take the moment to look at Peter. He's dressed in a grey shirt and black trousers. His dark hair is falling in his face. He's not wearing any makeup — I don't know why, but I feel like that's weird. He's not wearing any jewellery, either, even though I can see there's holes in his ears where piercings should go. He's drinking the glass of water slowly and staring straight ahead. I consider asking him more questions, but decide against it. I can't really remember a whole lot about him, and what I do remember conflicts with itself. So, I go looking for something I might be able to use to destroy the camera. The cutlery is too fragile — if there'd been a knife, I would have used that, but no dice. So, I pick up a plate, hide it under my coat when Peter isn't looking, and walk back down the corridor.

I'm at my door when it occurs to me — I haven't actually seen an exit. The only way out of the kitchen was back up the corridor, and I knew there weren't any exits in the room I'd woken up in or in the bathroom. So, I tested the other door I hadn't been through yet. It was locked. I was half tempted to kick it in, but I'm not quite that desperate. Not yet at least.

I take the plate out from my coat once I get into the room and shut the door. It's not exactly ideal — hell, this would probably be easier if I had a shoe to hit it with, but I'm guessing that's why they didn't give me shoes. I walk over to the door and lock it. Then I grab the plate and slam it as hard as I can into the edge of the desk.

The sound reminds me of — something. I don't remember what. I can feel panic constricting my chest and my heart beating faster. I hear footsteps, and my legs feel weak. I walk over to the bed, barely making it there before my legs give out entirely. The knocking on the door seems far, far too loud. I shove the plate fragment I'm still holding under the bedsheet.

"Juno!" Peter says through the door. He sounds worried. "Juno, are you alright?"

I don't answer. I've heard this before. — Wait, what?

No, no, I've heard something… not this, but something too close to this for comfort. Memories come flooding into my brain, nearly knocking me over with the force. I try to sort through them. I think Peter knocks again, says something else. And then another piece of information clicks into place, an echo of words scattered across my memory, an echo of  _ It's been nice knowing you, Nureyev, _ an echo of  _ So, please: just call me what you used to _ , from some other place and some other time. I stay frozen until Peter Nureyev knocks again. "Juno?"

Then, as I struggle to form an answer, the door opens.

"Juno — are you hurt?" Nureyev looks from the shattered plate to me shaking and sweating on the bed. 

"No," I manage to say.

"Juno — breathe deeply." Nureyev counted out how long I needed to breathe in and out for, and I began to calm down. Once I didn't feel like I was dying anymore, Nureyev swept up the broken shards of plate on the floor. While he was in the kitchen throwing it away, I thought about what I knew about Peter Nureyev. It was like being in a library where all the book titles have been painted over. But the name Peter Nureyev gave me somewhere to look. I didn't remember much — a smile and a look in his eyes and a pair of lips on mine — but it told me things, things I could use to work outwards, treating my own shrouded and disconnected memories as one of those conspiracy boards with all the red string.

I looked at Nureyev as he came back in, with more information than I'd had before. He smiled at me, but it wasn't the smile I remembered. The look in his eyes and on his face didn't have the same insufferable confidence. 

"Hey, Peter?" I keep calling him that, even if I have a feeling it's wrong somehow. I'm not sure I want to show my hand so openly.

"Yes, Juno?"

"What do you do? As your job? I can't remember."

"I'm… between jobs, at the moment. For the longest time, I was a thief, but I've had something of a change in perspectives lately. I came to the realisation that a life of crime may not be what my soul truly desires."

"Huh." Juno tries to reconcile this with everything he's remembered about Nureyev thus far. Him being a thief definitely makes sense. The change of heart… not so much.

I let him go, assuring him I'm ok, and I lie down and try to piece together my thoughts until I fall asleep. 

The next day, when I wake up, the first thing I see is the camera staring at me, and it's then that I remember what I was doing in the first place. I go to lock the door before I realise something: the door  _ was  _ locked. I'd locked it, and Nureyev had opened it like it wasn't even locked. I wouldn't consider that especially weird for Nureyev, and I hadn't been in much of a listening state, but I don't think he picked the lock.

I look around. I need the chair to get up to the camera. and I can't move the bed, which leaves the desk. I pick it up with some difficulty, and carry it over to the door, barricading the entrance to my room. Then, I grab my plate shard, and walk over to the chair, stand on it, and start hacking away. Just as I wedged the plate shard into the turning mechanism and began to wiggle it loose, I heard knocking again.

"Juno, is everything alright?"

"Everything's  _ great, _ " I say, as I feel something give in the mechanism. I yank the camera off, and begin trying to saw through the wires.

"Juno, you don't want to do this."

"I'm pretty sure I do, Nureyev." I get far enough through the wires that they snap when I tug them.

"This is for your own good, Juno. You need to recover from your injuries."

Suddenly, I had a moment of clarity that I really should have had the first time he said that, but I think I can be forgiven for having a bit of an overwhelming time right now.

"What injuries?"

"What do you mean?"

"I wasn't really injured at all when I woke up. Definitely not badly enough to give me amnesia. What  _ happened,  _ Nureyev?" It wasn't just that it was a lie. It was that it was possibly the worst lie I'd ever heard. I felt offended on Nureyev's behalf.

"I — I — You —" He was struggling to get words out, like someone was forcing his mouth closed. Then — "Fine. Do what you want with the camera."

I looked at the camera in my hand, dropped it, and stamped on it until all its little lights went off. Nureyev knew what happened to me. And he couldn't tell me, and I felt like the answer to  _ why  _ was on the tip of my tongue, like it was on my peripheral vision, but vanished every time I turned to look at it.

I spent the next day mostly on my comms, making notes about what I could and couldn't remember. I knew I'd left Hyperion, which had something to do with the name Buddy Aurinko. I knew I'd some time aboard a ship — I could picture my cabin. I knew —

— my comms screen suddenly went black for a split second. I waited, looking down at it. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, without me typing anything, words began to write themselves into my notes.

_ hey boss!!!! _

At first, I felt relief flood through me. Then, a second later, anxiety. What if this is a trap from the people watching me?

_ Hey, Rita. _

_ What was opposite your desk in the old office? _

_ wasn’t it that painting of neptune done by that guy who was green-blue colourblind? _

I breathed another sigh of relief.

_ Yeah. Sorry. just had to check it was you. _

_ now, boss, are you gonna tell me what's going on with you and mista ransom? _

_ Wish I could. I woke up here yesterday with all my memories scrambled. I'm working on trying to put them back together, but it's slow going. Ransom seems to know what happened, but he won't tell me. _

_ where are you? _

I looked out of the window for a second, trying to keep myself from throwing up as I properly realised how high up we were. The architecture was generally ever so slightly different grey concrete blocks packed closely together. Though none of the ones near came up to this height, I could see some in the distance that might.

_ We're in some kind of apartment? It's very high up. Tallest building for a few blocks at least. There's cameras in the kitchen, and there used to be one in my bedroom, but I destroyed it. There's another door. I don't know where it leads. If there's an exit, it has to be there. _

_ hmm _

There was about a minute long pause before she responded again.

_ i can get into the hallway and kitchen cameras. there's none behind any of the corridor rooms. im guessing the one where it says a camera should be there is you? _

_ One of the others is a bathroom. I don't have any way to pick the lock on the other one. _

_ How long until you can get us out of here? _

I paced for a few minutes as I waited for another message. I must be wearing a hole in the fancy new carpet.

_ there's a lot of guards watching your building and the rest of the floors are absolutely full of them _

_ captain a says a few days now we're in contact with you _

_ Ok. Can you see what Ransom's doing through the cameras? _

_ i think hes cooking something? thats not good _

_ It's good for me. Means he's distracted. _

Rita wrote and deleted the next message a few times.

_...there's some kinda signal coming off of him too _

_ do you think he might be a robot mista steel? _

_ Oh no. Not again. _

Another memory flashed in my head. Vespa telling me she'd seen Nureyev outside of the ship. Then, seeing Buddy leaving after we'd been attacked by… something.

But this? This didn't feel like that. That'd been a take out and replace job. This… if I were to take a bet, Nureyev was still in there. I worked backwards in my mind. What was the last thing I remember? What happened before that, and before that, and before —

— Why'd I leave Hyperion?

And then it clicks, and suddenly I feel a pit in my stomach as a memory slides into place.

_ Rita. _

_ yes, boss? _

_ The signal. The one you picked up from Ransom. Is it a Theia Soul signal? _

Another pause.

_ … i mean, it's pretty different from last time, but now you say it… _

_ Fuck. _

_ Ok, I'm still gonna try and get through that door. I'm going to wait a bit, though, so you can come get me if everything goes wrong. I'm pretty sure I won't make it through the door, but it seems like my best way of working out what their play is. _

_ good luck, boss! _

It's two days before I make my move. I did talk to Rita and briefly Buddy about it, but their input was just the final push I needed. Partly it's just hunger, but I don't want to take a chance with food provided by people who are locking me up and monitoring me unless I have to. But then, there's also Nureyev. Once a day, he knocks and asks how I am. I keep saying I'm fine. Trying not to give him a reason to come in. I know the Soul could make him force his way inside if needs be I push the desk out of the way of the door, and give a little wave to the corridor camera. Then, I lift my leg and I kick the door as hard as I can. My foot makes a small hole in the door, going halfway through it. I kick again and again, until my foot is more splinters than actual foot and there's a hole in the door big enough to shove my hand through. I'm about to do that exactly when Nureyev walks into view and along the corridor, stopping a few feet away from me.

"Juno. You need to stop this."

"Stop what?" Now I'm looking for it, I can see the faint glow of some kind of light on his chest through his shirt.

"You know exactly what I mean, Juno."

"Yeah, well, what are you gonna do if I don't stop? Slap a Soul onto me? Why haven't you already done that?" Nureyev doesn't say anything. One of his hands is in his pocket, gripping tightly to something I can't see. "Or did you already try that and it didn't work?" Nureyev nods, briefly, before he suddenly stops. But I've already got my answer. Standing here now, watching Nureyev stare at me like he was waiting for me to make a move, I knew what they were trying to do, leaving me alone in the apartment with only Nureyev watching me.

They know I'm resistant — immune? — to THEIA tech, but not why. But also, I'm just a normal human lady. No superpowers or anything. And without my blaster or both eyes, Nureyev could easily take me in a fight even without a mind control chip that could force him to use more strength than he had to stop me. And I'm pretty sure they were betting on me not wanting to risk hurting Nureyev. And I wouldn’t have, if Rita and I didn’t have a plan. I reach my hand into the hole, and a second later, Nureyev slams into me full force, and, hey, if I didn’t have any head injuries before, I sure do now. As well as, from what I can tell, my collarbone, at least one of my ribs, and my hand.

“Nureyev. Nureyev, you don’t want to —” I see a flash of light, then a searing heat against my neck. I look down at the plasma knife pressed far closer to my throat than I’d like. I look back up, keeping eye contact with Nureyev even if he’s so close I’m glad I can’t go cross-eyed anymore. His eyes - almost the same eyes as I knew, the eyes of the man I love, but not quite. The Soul had taken so much of what made Nureyev as a person that there seemed to be nothing behind the eyes when I looked at him now.

I heard a small sound from my comms. Nureyev heard it too, and reached as if to grab them, before realising they were trapped underneath me. “Nureyev,” I said again — “Nureyev, goddamnit, listen to me, I know you’re in there —” And then I see it, for a split second. The look on Nureyev’s face flickers — before returning to the blank expression he’d had before. 

“This is for the greater good, Juno.” His voice is more obviously robotic than before.

“That’s bullshit and you know it! C’mon, Nureyev? The greater good from a bunch of bots that tell you what to do, really? You’re gonna let that thing tell you that?”

“I — I —” His grip loosens for a second, the blade withdrawing a few inches from my throat. I pull my arm out from under me, up to my chest, before he pins it there again, his grip tightening and the completely expressionless look returning to his face. "My old ideals were flawed. Stop moving." He’s frowning, like he’s trying to get rid of a headache or a troubling thought. Both, if my spotty memories of my experience were anything to go by.

I slowly moved the hand trapped between us until I could feel the slightly warm metal of Nureyev's Soul through his shirt. “Thanks. Was just trying to get a bit more comfortable. Ow ow ow —" He shoved my shoulder into the floor, and I could  _ hear _ the bone splintering under the pressure.

"Do not attempt to escape," the Theia says with his voice.

"Oh, give me a break. You're pushing me straight into the floor at a weird angle, I didn't exactly get time to pick a comfy position, and my arm was starting to go dead. Plus, pretty sure you shattered half of my bones. Not like I'm getting anywhere."

"Theia, how injured is he?" There's a pause, then "— Hm," which I can only assume isn't good for me. I mean, either way there's no good answer for me. Either I'm full of more splinters than bone at this point, or he'll decide I'm still a threat and correct that.

Eventually, I get sick of him staring at me with blank eyes and decide to risk the further pulverisation of my skeleton. “So, uh, how long are we gonna be here? ‘Cause if it’s more than a few minutes, can we move? I’m not the youngest lady anymore and I think I’ve got a bad back —” He slaps a hand over my mouth to stop me from talking.

“We will remain here until the guards arrive.”

“How long’s that going to be?" I say, slightly muffled by his hand. He’s about to respond when we both hear the noises of blaster fire from below us.

Both of us stay perfectly still and quiet for a second, straining our ears to try and pick up any other sound. Then he says "Theia, what is going on down there — yes I know  _ someone's _ shooting  _ someone _ —" I can almost hear the Soul running calculations, wondering if the good of going to help whatever was happening outweighed the bad of letting me follow him. Of course, he could just kill me. But — and I hear the echoes of a conversation that feels like it was a lifetime ago, and actually was half the galaxy away, in the Martian desert — I think the Theia scientists need me, or I’d be dead by now.

You see, I didn’t run into this confrontation unprepared. I’d been talking to Rita and Buddy, like I said. And they told me this time today would be the best opportunity they had to break into the building and get us out of there. But we couldn’t exactly take Nureyev with us without removing the Soul, and if we removed it before the attack, someone would have just come and replaced it. So, this. I distract the Theia while Rita hacks into it, and everyone else keeps the guards occupied so they can’t interrupt. I just have to keep his attention on me until Rita's done.

“Look. Nureyev. Glass. Duke. Ransom —” I say through his hand. 

" _ Yes,  _ I  _ know  _ the target's trying to distract me —" he says through gritted teeth.

"And hey, it seems to be working so it's not like you're giving me a lot of reasons to stop," I say with a cockiness I don't feel.

"I haven't been forbidden from killing you."

"Oooooh, but you don't really want to do that, do you?" As I say it, he activates the plasma blade again in his hand that isn't trying to keep my mouth closed, and pressed it right up to my throat. It's so close that even though I can't see it, I can feel a tremor in the blade. Nureyev's hand is shaking. "Ok, maybe that wasn't the smartest thing to say, but —" The blade begins to press into my neck, only by a couple of millimeters, but enough that I can feel the water in the tissue around the blade boiling as it's pushed in, and,  _ fuck _ , I didn't want to do anything that could hurt him beyond what the Theia made him do, but I'm not just going to let this thing using the body of the man I love kill me like that. So, I open my mouth as wide as I can, and bite down on his hand. The metallic taste of blood fills my mouth, and, instinctively, he pulls his hand back and clutches it with the other, dropping the plasma blade. Before the Theia makes him regain his grip on me, I throw him off of me (which, he's pretty light given his height, but ouch) and grab the knife, then elbow him as hard as I can in the neck as he lets go of his hand. I try and stand up, but just the attempt to put my legs under me tells me that isn't going to work, so I pull myself behind the couch I hadn't really registered last time I was in here. In probably my first lucky break so far, I wasn't bleeding, and I managed to get behind it before Nureyev entered the room.

"Juno, you know you can't run. And there's only so many places to hide." I mean, he was right, but that wasn't the point. I don't respond. "If you come out now, I might go easy on you."

I knew that wasn't true, and I could hear Nureyev's footsteps getting closer. I heard him come round the side of the couch, and I started scrambling away as quickly as I could. Of course, that only bought me a few seconds. Nureyev caught up to me, keeping his hands well clear of my face this time.

"Nureyev —" His knee was on my chest, and I could feel the strain on the muscles between my ribs as they struggled to expand. "Nureyev, you don't want — to —" All the air is gone from my lungs before I can get the sentence out. But the plasma blade is still in my hand, and my arm still seems to mostly be in one piece, so, in a last ditch effort, I activate it, plunge it into Nureyev's leg, then pull it out and throw it as far across the room as I can. The pressure on my chest lightens for a second, and I hack out a few painful breaths, my ribs burning with the effort. Nureyev's visibly shaking now, and he leans down to restrain my arm, and I can feel the heat from the Soul as it fights for control. I look into his eyes, and I can see brief flickers of Nureyev, in and out, growing more frequent. He reaches a hand into his pocket, and pulls out another knife, and of all the bits of Nureyev that could be in this thing, why did that have to be one? "Please, I love you, don't do this —" One hand presses down on my windpipe, leaving me gasping for air, taking rapid, shallow, shuddering breaths as the knife slowly presses into my throat. I try to move my arms, my legs, to do anything to get away from this thing that is puppeting Nureyev's body, but I can't move anymore. Every part of me screams in protest as I try and move it even an inch, my breath coming in quick, pained gulps, my blood boiling as it hits the plasma knife. I close my eyes so I don't have to watch his face as he kills me.

Then, suddenly, the knife drops. I hear it clatter to the ground beside me. The pressure on my throat disappears.

Then, just as I open my eyes, I see Nureyev crumple to the floor.

For a second, I think he's unconscious. Then, I see him weakly lift an arm, reach inside his shirt, and pull off the Theia Soul. He holds it out at arm's length, like it's infected or explosive. Weakly, I reach for it. He lets me take it from his hand, and I shove it into my pocket. I sit up, ignoring my body's cries of protest, and gently maneuver us both until his head is in my lap.

"Hey," I say softly, looking down at him.

"Hello," he says, looking up at me. "I appear to have broken a… not insignificant number of bones."

"Yeah, the Theias'll do that to you." He gently ran a hand through Nureyev's hair. "The others are coming, and Rita knows I broke bones I didn’t even know I had when they slapped one of those things on me before."

"I’m sorry about… all that."

"I’m fine." It wasn't really true, and they both knew it, but Juno was just thrilled they were both alive at this point. "Sorry I stabbed you. And bit you." 

"I didn't exactly leave you with many options."

"A few broken bones. It happens. Wasn’t your fault."

"You know I'd never hurt you of my own volition, right, Juno?" I think he reads something in my face, because he follows with "I mean — excluding very specific and unlikely circumstances where I have to hurt you to save myself."

"'Course I do, Nureyev. I know that wasn't you,not really." I sigh. Now is not the time to talk about it, about how to separate what the Theia did from Nureyev. So I change the subject. "I don’t even remember how this started."

For a second, he seems surprised at the change of subject, but then he says "I wasn’t there the whole time, but — how much don’t you remember?"

"From what I can remember, this was just supposed to be..."

"...a normal job?" He laughs. It sounds hollow.

"Yeah. I remembered we were stealing something from someone with more money than any person should ever have —"

"When aren’t we doing that?"

"Fair point. Uh, I think it was a painting?"

"A sculpture, but close enough. You thought it was ugly."

"I’m sure I was right."

He sighs, dramatically. " _ No  _ appreciation for culture."

"I feel like you’re just saying that to annoy me."

"Why would you think that?" he said. I flicked him on the nose, and he gave a little offended gasp.

"Anyway, I don’t remember him having any link to the Theias."

"None of us knew."

"Yeah, I know. Buddy probably wouldn’t have sent me if she’d known."

"Most likely not, no," he agreed.

"I remember the first day going fine. I think I remember talking about what we were going to do day two, but I don’t remember doing it."

"I wouldn’t claim to remember the original plan. We were somewhat derailed."

"We thought the best way to get access to the company security codes would be by breaking into one of the shell companies, because they’d be less prepared," I said. It was the first clear detail that had reappeared in my head while trying to piece together how we got here."

"You’d think."

"So they were ready for us?"

"Not for us  _ specifically _ . Neither of us realised there was something more going on, but we hadn’t been given a reason to."

"They were ready for someone to come for them."

"Far more prepared than we’d bargained for. As it transpired, they changed the layout and schedules of their security more often than I had thought possible, given their apparent size."

"Yeah, didn’t we go for a small one that seemed like it was struggling to stay afloat?"

"We thought we did. It’s possible that this was conducted sufficiently secretly that nobody knows, or that Buddy’s informant on Hathor was paid to look the other way," he said, sounding like he thought the latter was more likely.

"Or they slapped a Soul on them, too."

"That’s a possibility."

"So, the guards got us?"

"We tripped an alarm. I think it might have been moved just out of the range of the disabling EMP." I could tell, from Nureyev’s tone, that he’d spent a considerable amount of time turning over what happened in his mind, working out what we'd done wrong.

" _ Then _ the guards got us."

"It wasn’t until then I realised there was something very wrong. There were — maybe twenty, thirty? — guards. The information we had said there shouldn’t be more than 10 in the building."

"We could have taken 10 underpaid guards."

"I know that. We both knew that. I think that’s another factor."

"We got cocky. Thought it would be easy."

"It should have been, by any metric I can think of to attempt to determine these things ahead of time."

"I’m not blaming you, Nureyev."

"I know, I know."

"Anyway, what happened next?"

"I’m not entirely sure. We were both stunned. I remember waking up alone, with  _ that thing _ —" he glares at the pocket I put the Soul into in disgust — "in my chest."

"Surprised it didn’t reject you first. If I was an evil computer chip that doesn’t like crime and makes people do everything for whatever its programmer thinks the greater good is, I’d take one look at you and go ‘nope, not going anywhere near that.’"

He raises an eyebrow. "I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or an insult."

"Compliment."

"Well, then, thank you."

"What happened after that? I mean — you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to."

"No, I…" He takes a deep breath. "It’s fine. After what the Soul told me was three days, they brought me in to talk to you."

"Were they trying the old “get through to someone using someone they care about?”"

"I believe so. Your memory — more specifically, your ability to access your memories — had been — temporarily, so far as they were aware — meddled with by a large number of attempts to place a Theia Soul onto you."

"Why did they want you specifically? Dramatic heartfelt speech? True love's kiss?"

"The intention, as far as I can tell, was to get me to give you a Soul, and that our... bond would negate your immunity."

"Guessing that didn’t work."

"Unless you have something to tell me?"

"Nope. So they locked us up in here so they could watch us?" I stared at the camera, which was still focused on me. Nureyev followed my gaze, picked up the knife he had dropped, and threw it directly through the lens.

"That's better. And it was you specifically. They wanted to work out if there was anything special about you."

"Well, sure hope I wasted their time and money."

"I believe they weren't thrilled about you destroying your camera," he says, sounding amused. "I have no real idea if they got what they wanted on the immunity research front, but I somehow doubt it."

"Good."

"So, how did you get in contact with the others?"

"There was a blank comms in my pocket. Meant to keep me entertained, I think. Plus an extra camera, but Rita told me how to disable comms cameras a while back. Anyway, Rita hacked it in a day."

"You'd think they would have Rita-proofed their technology by now, given what happened in Newtown."

"Dark Matters has been trying for years. It's impossible."

"And Buddy says none of us are the best at what we do," he said, sounding impressed.

We lie there in silence for a while. I know the problems aren’t over. The Theia corporation has Nureyev’s name now, and if we’re even going to make a stab at purging it from their records — which might not be possible — he’ll have to tell the rest of the crew his name. I know Nureyev knows it, so I’m not gonna say it. And there’s more Theias out there. I’ll talk to Buddy about what we can do about that when I get the chance. For now, I keep running my fingers through Nureyev's hair.

"Look, Nureyev, I know you're worried about what will happen next. And if you want to find some isolated asteroid to hide out on until this all blows over, I don't blame you."

"Tempting. Boring," he says, dismissively.

"I thought it might be."

"What am I going to do on an isolated asteroid, stay safe until I waste away?"

"Find one with a nice view. Stare at it until you hate it. But if that's not appealing, I'll be here, and so will the others."

"Up until the point when they do some research."

"I know you don't want to hear it, but there's a solution to that."

"I know. Tell them before they find the Brahmese government papers calling me a terrorist," he says, quietly so the camera can't hear.

"I'm not saying this is gonna be easy, Nureyev. I'm saying you're not alone. I'm not going anywhere, no matter what you say."

"I'm not leaving. Regardless of any personal feelings on the matter, I stand a better chance of living — well, living a life that doesn't consist of living somewhere nobody would ever go voluntarily and farming Venusian cabbages — if I remain with the crew. Besides..." He lifts himself up a little, and pulls me down into a brief kiss. "I even quite like some of you."

"I never could have guessed," I say quietly, our lips still practically touching.

"I think I've been very subtle," he says, and I feel his smile more than I see it.

"Keep telling yourself that."

"Oh, would you rather I was more subdued in my affections?" he said, smirking.

"You know that's not what I meant, you smug bastard."

He falls dramatically back onto my lap. "I'm wounded, Juno! I can't believe I've broken every bone in my body and you'd still hurt me like this."

"Shut up," I say, laughing. 

He pulls an exaggerated angry face, then tugs me down to kiss him again. There's something about kissing Peter Nureyev that makes my injuries feel less painful, my problems less overwhelming. There's something about the way he looks at me that makes me think everything's gonna be ok.

"Nureyev?"

"Hm?"

"I love you."

He smiles. "I love you too."

"It's good to have you back."

"It's good to be back."

**Author's Note:**

> comment please this took like 2 full weeks to write


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